Environment and Health of Arctic Peoples

Lauravetlan Information Bulletin, #2, 13 March 1997

[The following article is taken from the "L'auravetl'an Information
Bulletin" #2. The L'auravetl'an Information Center is a Moscow based
training center run by indigenous organizations. It attempts to give
indigenous grassroots representatives from the Russian North, Siberia and
the Far East skills for human rights activism and to serve as an
information bridge to Western organizations. The bulletin is published in
Russian and English. For contact please see below.]

Arctic environmental problems have attracted much attention in recent
years. This is due to two facts: The first is the critical environmental
situation in areas with ongoing oil and gas development, both land-based
and on sea-shelves. The second is the increasing international awareness
of conditions under which indigenous peoples live in these areas.

The environmental damage to the land, the waters and air has a direct
impact on all living organisms from plants to humans. According to the
Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences the "general health
resources" of the indigenous population of the Russian North will be
exhausted in 2-3 generations, unless something is done to improve the
situation.

The average life expectancy of indigenous people [in Russia] is 43-45
years. Especially alarming is the death rate amongst indigenous peoples in
the Russian North. With 12 people out of 35 it is higher than the average
rate throughout Russia. Furthermore, the death rate among indigenous
peoples is 1,5 times higher than among the non-indigenous population of
the North. The first place among all causes of death is taken by alcohol
poisoning and alcohol related accidents, upper respiratory and infection
diseases. However, the main reason is the destruction of the environmental
balance of our territories.

For instance most of the reindeer meet exported from Western Siberia to
Scandinavia was returned due to high content of heavy metals and
radionucleids. Due to pollution, the sturgeon population in the Ob river
has decreased by ten times within the last 15 years. Saturation of the
riverbed with oil and by-products is 10%. This is especially dangerous to
indigenous peoples who traditionally eat raw fish. In some areas
contamination of people by helmintis is 100%.

Contamination of reindeer herders by Cezium-137 and Strontium-90 is 100
times higher than of people in Russia proper. In the North the decline of
Cezium-137 in the human body received through the nutrition chain moss-
reindeer-human or ptarmigan-human takes 5-10 longer than in Southern
regions. Nuclear pollution of the Arctic is mainly caused by military
facilities, the Northern fleet, the Bilibino nuclear power plant on
Chukotka peninsula and the nuclear test site of Novaya Zemlya. The
military facilities are as well sources of chemical pollution. In the
summer season, about 5000 ships in the Arctic leave behind 430,000 cubic
meters of oil containing liquid emissions. In order to ease this critical
situation deliberate investigations will have to be undertaken. It has to
be decided if in the long run it is really beneficial and necessary to
continue environmentally dangerous industrial and military activities in
the Arctic.

An infrastructure that uses natural resources of a certain region must
allow its environmental endurance. The practice of other countries of the
Arctic Rim shows that all of them consider the creation of large cities
impractical and damaging. They practice a shift method to exploit Northern
resources and take only those resources from the Arctic for which they
have no alternative sources. This eases the pressure on the fragile Arctic
environment. Diversification of economic activities in the North is the
way chosen by these Arctic countries. The focal point for those strategies
are the traditional activities of the Indigenous Peoples of the North.